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Bertie

I copped on soon enough that I would never really understand this pylon pox-up unless I went back to the beginning of the sorry tale.

My reading has taken me back to the early days of the original energy plan. Bertie did the original doodle when he took breaks from reading “ps I love you”. I don’t know if he was smoking back then but the whole thing has a feel to it like it was written on the back of a box of smokes. Noel Dempsey copied it into his colouring book when his mammy allowed him to visit Bertie for a play date. It was called “Delivering a Sustainable Energy Future For Ireland“.

Now I only did a year in Maynooth before I left to lay blocks – me mam was in tears but a mans gotta do what’s needed and my da wasn’t getting any younger – but even I can see that report was ‘tidied up’ by a mad rapper with a crack pipe. Jeannie Mac, it has enough spin to power the GridLink.

The plan was taken up by the Green Party when they whored themselves to the FF and came into Government. Bertie’s plan had called for 33% renewable energy but John Gormley had to show that his dick was bigger than Bertie’s so he took that to 40%. This was when the EU was asking us for 16%. Go figure. The baton was picked up by Eamon Ryan who continued singing loud for the wind farms. Yes, your right, that’s the same Eamon Ryan who is now running so fast in the other direction like he’s got a wind turbine up his arse. Or maybe he’s running for Brussels? And now the latest Minister is running for the wind farms like a rabbitte after a carrot.

This government is very good at blaming everything on the last government. Jesus, Mary and Joseph – do we look like eejits? You’ve had three years to stop the madness that is Grid25, but instead you’re pushing the plan like a streel askin for it.

The EU was telling us that we had to get our renewable energy from three sectors – transport (electric cars); heating (retrofitting: insulating attics and walls) and power generation (creating electricity).

What this government has done is ignore the first two and throw all their eggs into the third basket – electricity generation. And even there they have gone big on one type of electricity generation – the wind farm. They ignored other types of electricity generation like hydro, or collecting the gas from the slurry tank or all sorts of other clever ways– ways that will create jobs at home. Fine Gael and Labour have rather gone with buying wind turbines from the Germans and the Swedes, which can either be operated by one or two people (Germans or Swedes) or can even be operated by a computer in another country (no jobs for anybody).

And all this based on a plan written on the back of a box of smokes seven years ago by a politician who couldn’t change a light bulb. Bertie might have been an energy engineer when it came to buying a round for the lads after a match, but not when it came to deciding this country’s energy policy until 2020. And Noel couldn’t even colour in without going over the lines.

We are used to politicians spouting shite like that Limerick sewer pipe during the floods but at some stage you gotta dig in and say ah come on lads, you’re taking the piss! We might even have a laugh-ana-nudge-ana-wink at the cute hoors. But not with this. This is reckin people’s lives. It is destroying their health. It is breaking up families. It is another reason for the young ones to leave for Oz or the States without looking back.